Mom Accused In Abuse Case Says Her Hair Strangled Girl

A Doctor And Child-welfare Officials Don't Believe The Mount Dora Woman, Who Is On Trial.

August 31, 2004|By Sherri M. Owens, Sentinel Staff Writer

TAVARES -- Maria Irene Perez says that she woke up in her Mount Dora apartment in the wee hours of Aug. 5, 2002, and found her 13-month-old daughter strangling.

She said the baby was atop her head, tangled in the long strands of her hair, which was later measured at about 111/2 inches in a ponytail and about 19 inches from the crown to the tip.

Doctors and child-welfare officials examined the child and the thin, red mark around her neck, but they did not believe her mother. Perez was arrested and is on trial this week, charged with aggravated child abuse. If convicted, the mother of six could face 15 years in prison.

"In my opinion, there is no way human hair could produce that kind of mark on that child," said Ed Rodriguez, a doctor at Florida Hospital Waterman, who examined the girl the day of her injury. He testified Monday, the first day of the trial.

"She is lying," Beth Crumpler, the assistant state attorney trying the case, said of Perez in her opening statement to the jury. "And the only reason she would lie is that she deliberately strangled her baby."

But if Perez is lying and the baby didn't accidentally become tangled in her hair, what strangled the child?

Police don't know. They never identified a weapon.

"Assumptions and accusations abound," Perez's lawyer, Michael Hatfield, said in his opening statement. "This was a tragic, freak accident but is explainable. There was no crime then or now."

Perez told authorities she initially could not untangle the hair around the child's neck. She said she awakened her boyfriend, who was sleeping beside her, and he tried to cut the hair but found the pruning shears he was using to be too coarse.

He left the bedroom, and while he was out, Perez said, she was able to free the child, who was then purple and listless.

The couple dressed, arranged for the care of the other children in the house and took the baby to the hospital.

Rodriguez examined the single impression that extended about three-quarters around the child's neck.

"I don't think I'll ever forget that," he told the jury.

If the marking had been caused by hair, Rodriguez said, he would have expected to see hair in the child's mouth or throat indicating she might have been chewing on it and had swallowed some. He said he would have expected the mark on her neck to have been more diffused, and he would have expected to see some stray hairs caught in the fleshly folds on the baby's neck.

In addition to the mark on the neck, Rodriguez also noticed petechiae, tiny broken blood vessels on the baby's face that he said most likely appeared as a result of constant pressure cutting off the child's blood circulation.

Suspecting abuse, he called law enforcement and child-protection authorities, as required by law.